The subject matter herein relates generally to electrical connectors, and more particularly, to multiple electrical connectors arranged in an assembly.
Electrical connectors have been developed that are manually installed onto printed circuit boards and other structures. Often, a large number of electrical connectors, such as up to twenty electrical connectors, are installed on a single printed circuit board. Installation of electrical connectors can involve inserting hundreds of pins located on the electrical connectors into corresponding receiving holes in a printed circuit board or other structure. Known systems utilize stiffening devices to hold multiple electrical connectors together for simultaneous mounting to the circuit board. However, such stiffening devices are used on electrical connectors having equal heights and lengths such that the tops and backs of the electrical connectors are all aligned with one another. Additionally, such stiffening devices do not address any needs for maintaining positions of the pins.
Typically, there are several different types and sizes of electrical connectors that are mountable on a printed circuit board. Customers often want custom arrangements of electrical connectors for installation onto printed circuit boards. Known stiffening devices are not adequate for use in such situations as the stiffening devices cannot accommodate different height or different length electrical connectors. Rather, in order to attain a desired custom arrangement of modules on a printed circuit board, a customer manually installs the different desired modules one by one onto the printed circuit boards which can be very time consuming.
A need remains for an improved device for holding multiple electrical connectors together in an electrical connector assembly.